Challenge: recoding a data.frame() — make it faster

Question

Recoding is a common practice for survey data, but the most obvious routes take more time than they should.

The fastest code that accomplishes the same task with the pr

Answer 1

My computer is obviously much slower, but structure is a pretty fast way to do this:

> system.time({
+ dat1 <- dat
+ for(x in 1:ncol(dat)) {
+   dat1[,x] <- factor(dat1[,x], labels=re.codes)
+   }
+ })
   user  system elapsed 
 11.965   3.172  15.164 
> 
> system.time({
+ m <- as.matrix(dat)
+ dat2 <- data.frame( matrix( re.codes[m], nrow = nrow(m)))
+ })
   user  system elapsed 
  2.100   0.516   2.621 
> 
> system.time(dat3 <- data.frame(lapply(dat, structure, class='factor', levels=re.codes)))
   user  system elapsed 
  0.484   0.332   0.820 

# this isn't because the levels get re-ordered
> all.equal(dat1, dat2)

> all.equal(dat1, dat3)
[1] TRUE